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Gender articles for nouns - why? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 55 24 February 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, if you want a language that gets rid of thousands of weird rules and an even greater number of thousands of inexplicable exceptions, then you probably are best off ignoring national languages, and going for a constructed language such as Esperanto. It will certainly satisfy your need for the language to be much more logical. The downside is that you won't have many people to talk to nor as much literature to read as in the less-logical languages. One of the hard lessons in language learning is the need to let go of the urge to fight against the lack of logic in a language, and just shrug your shoulders and surrender to the reality that languages aren't as perfect as we would like them to be. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 10 of 55 24 February 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I generally don't mind gender in languages but I can't help but be glad that English lost its genders, as the Old English nominal system is still the most complicated and confusing one I've ever come across; three genders, five cases and four noun classes that only roughly correspond to gender. Ugh. I'm not sure what to think about your example of "ship" by the way, since the Old English scip was neuter. The Dutch word schip is neuter as well but ships are also often referred to with 'she', which I thought was part of a larger romantic attitude of considering things like the moon, the sea and ships female. Edited by ReneeMona on 24 February 2011 at 8:41pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| spirit splice Newbie United States Joined 5034 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 55 24 February 2011 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
See, I don't. see it as fun or interesting. I find it annoying and an over complication. It's like all the silent vowels in various languages, what is the point in them being there except out of laziness and tradition? An overhaul is much needed across the board. It's like the ö is German. How does a vowel end up with a consonant soumd in it (approximating ur or oor)? Seems to defeat the purpose of it being a vowel in the first place if a consonant can butt it's nose in where it doesn't belong. It is interesting how messy languages are, especially when written. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5258 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 12 of 55 24 February 2011 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The ö can have a consonant sound in it? I thought it just represented the vowels [œ] and
[ø]. Although I don't speak German so what do I know haha. Edit: Just a question, did you get that idea from books that say things like, "the ö sounds like the word "or" in English" and stuff like that? Because I hate when they say that (they always just happen to forget to mention that they're talking about dialects that don't pronounce the R's at the end of words, in which case there is no consonant). Also, it's just not accurate...even without the consonant. Edited by zecchino1991 on 24 February 2011 at 10:19pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 13 of 55 24 February 2011 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
While I understand where you're coming from, I can't help but feel that this attitude is going to be hindrance to you in learning a language like German. If you can't accept that all natural languages are going to have features that seem unnecessary or messy to you, I would urge you to learn Esperanto or maybe a creole instead. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 14 of 55 24 February 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
ö i s a vowel, no consonant there. Maybe you want to consider some preparatory study before drawing too definite conclusions. The fact that you hear it as uurps or oorgh or whatever you know from your native language is not relevant. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7013 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 15 of 55 24 February 2011 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The languages evolved mainly for the purpose of communication, not for the purpose of you learning them (or a foreign learner).
It would be way better for the learner if his target language was regular, without synonyms, with few and basic sounds, no formal/informal speech, with a standard and simple written system. It would also be good if there were a lot of literature, audio and speakers of this language. But then the native speaker of that language could have a lot of difficulties, such as: adapting foreign words, creating new words, slangs, writing poetry, unambiguous speech, etc. Finally, what comes easy has no value. Great dreams are achieved at the expense of great costs. This makes the whole polyglot challenge a rewarding one. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 55 24 February 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
As rafaelrbp has posted languages develop in ways regardless of what foreigners think they *should*. You dismiss spelling conventions that you don't like as indicators of "laziness" or "tradition" but if we're supposed to take complaints from learners seriously, then we as native English-speakers should likewise concur with foreigners on the validity of their complaints about English having so many tenses whereas other languages have fewer (for example, the present continuous tense has no clear match in German which for example uses "Ich gehe" to express both present continuous "I am going" and present simple "I go". I suspect that you'd agree with me that the nuance of "I am going" versus "I go" is noticeable and meaningful to anyone who is fluent in English). Looking for an ideal language whose characteristics would please everyone is pointless. It seems more like assuming one's complaints/opinions are shared by everyone else in the speech community, even if the others actually don't share those complaints (Wee kud spel Inglish with a feneemik cunvenchin but I dout that evrywun wud like it or agree to yooz it). It touches on Splog's point that you have to free your mind and accept the characteristics of languages other than your own rather than to judge them relative to some concept of what you (or some minority) believe would make for an ideal language. This is not to say that I don't have pet peeves about certain foreign languages and silently I sometimes wish that they were set up without things that I perceive or have concluded to be needlessly complicated (e.g. Estonian declension) or perplexingly ill-conceived (e.g. Russian orthography). However all of the ranting by me or other foreigners genuinely counts for very little and so it's better to make the best of it rather than to burn calories picking out things that are displeasing to us. Edited by Chung on 25 February 2011 at 12:15am 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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